Wednesday, October 28, 2009

My director Ashleigh and I were guests on the Matty in the Morning show on KISS 108 (107.9) this morning. Besides waking up at an ungodly hour, the interview went great and the djs were a lot of fun. To listen to the interview, go to our group's website www.queencityghosts.com and click on the "Paranormal News and Events" section.

I will also be doing two more interviews this Friday for KIXX 100.5 and MAXX 98.5, but the stations only come in in northern NH. You can listen to the interview online at www.kixx.com and www.maxx985.com

On Saturday we will be doing a live broadcast from an investigation in Enfield NH with KIXX and MAXX. The djs from each stations, as well as four contest winners will be coming along with us for the night to investigate the Shaker Museum in Enfield. There will definitely be live audio broadcasting through the night, as well as at least some video. We're working on trying to link our infrared cameras to either their website or their facebook page so that viewers can send messages to us throughout the night.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

I have been insanely busy and haven't posted in months, but here is a really quick update on what's been going on and I'll go into details further.

I have written a couple of articles on www.allthingsnewengland.com. The two topics so far are The Spalding Inn (Jay and Grant's Inn in Whitefield NH) and The Wilton Town Hall Theatre in Wilton NH.

On October 30th, my director Ashleigh and I will be on the Matty in the Morning Show on KISS 108 (107.9). We are EXTREMELY excited about this. It is THE most listened to radio station from NH to RI.

On October 31st we will be doing a live radio broadcast from the Sumner Mansion in VT. I don't have the radio coordinates at the moment, but will post them later. We will also be filming the investigation to post later.

And the first weekend of November, I will be headed out to Colorado to work the Beyond Reality Event at the Stanley Hotel, so if anyone is attending that, I will see you there!

I also have a few article summaries on parapsychological topics that I am going to post on here that I found interesting.

Monday, July 27, 2009

Last Saturday my group, Queen City Paranormal investigated the Wilton Town Hall Theatre in Wilton, NH. We invited our friends from the Maine Paranormal Society as well, and were very thankful for them making the two hour drive to help us out.

Dennis, who runs and maintains the theater, gave us a very warm welcome and gave us a rundown on the extensive history of the building. Before being built, a hotel existed on the property, which later burned, killing a young boy named Henry. In 1883, the building as it is today was built, and over the years has been used as a vaudeville playhouse, silent film house, police station, fire station, and is now being used as a movie theater and town hall (downstairs).

We set up two infrared cameras on the balcony of the main theater, overlooking the room. Activity in this room consists of apparitions of a tall, skinny man and short, plump woman, heavy footsteps and whispers. We then set up an IR camera pointing down the stairs, where Henry is said to walk up and down, looking for his parents.

We also set up two motion detectors on the landing of the stairs and some toys for Henry to play with. The last IR camera was set up in the clock tower, in the attic of the building. Teams were then rotated between the clock tower, main theater balcony, main theater, smaller theater, and downstairs (consisting of the old jail cells and town offices).

Activity found:

Before starting the investigation, a member of MPS was using the bathroom and heard a woman's voice whisper close to his ear.

Main theater balcony: I had put a flashlight (the kind with the button on one end) on the railing of the balcony and it suddenly turned on on its own. This actually took us a minute to even realize because Bill was sitting behind me at the time, and I thought he had turned on his flashlight.

Main theater: Ashleigh, Chris, and Darin were investigating in this room and could hear whispers and thought they could make out shadows darting throughout the theater. One passed so close in front of Ashleigh's face that she jumped up and walked to the back of the room. While Jim, JJ, and Sophia were investigating, they noticed that the curtain was swaying. They searched the area for any kind of air vents or open windows, but found no reason for this to happen.

Small theater: While Holly, Bill, and I were investigating in this room, our MEL pulled a nutty on us. For some reason, it was reading the temperature at over 100 degrees F, when it was roughly around 75. At one point, the temperature shot up to 185 degrees. We're not sure if this was a fluke thing and may have been caused by a low battery, but it was very odd. We used a separate thermometer to compare, but it read 75 degrees, so we kind of threw the MEL reading out as anything paranormal.

These pictures aren't very clear, but show the MEL reading the temperature as 116.6 degrees.

We also had a couple of k2 hits, but they didn't seem to follow any pattern or interact with any of our questions or instructions. A loud whisper was also heard by both Holly and I (seated on opposite sides of the theater). While Jim, Sophia, and JJ were investigating, they received about four k2 hits, also not following any clear pattern that they could find. Their K2 was also on a different end of the theater than we had had ours.

I am about halfway done reviewing our audio, but haven't found anything that has really jumped out at me. I marked a couple places where I need to load the audio on the computer and enhance the sound, but I'm leaning toward us not finding any substantial evps for the night. MPS will be reviewing the video soon and I will post any findings that they might have, as well as any evps they might have caught. I'm hoping to at least see the moving curtain on video.

Haunted?: We didn't come to any concrete decisions this time around, but we agree with Dennis that if there is something here, it is definitely residual and definitely harmless. Dennis said that we are welcome back any time and we look forward to spending at least a couple more nights at the theater. All in all, it was a very fun investigation and we enjoyed getting to spend time with MPS again.

And now for some pictures of Ashleigh and I horsing around on the cannons during one of our breaks:

This post was taken from Commonwealth Paranormal's myspace blog. To visit their myspace, go to: www.myspace.com/commonwealthparanormal

"New Mothman Sightings at Pt. Pleasant, WV

There have allegedly been two Mothman sightings in the Pt. Pleasant, WV area since July 9th.

Today, I took my 13 year old brother and 12 year old nephew to Pt. Pleasant so that they could learn more about the Mothman. While there, we stopped in Whites Steakhouse and talked with Carolin White. As some of you may remember, Carolin was on the "Mothman" episode of Paranormal State. Anyway, she told us that there had been two recent sightings of Mothman there in Pt. Pleasant in the Sand Hill and Jim Hill Road areas.

One of the sightings was reported to her by a gentleman from Tennessee who was returning to Pt. Pleasant to visit relatives. According to her, he said the creature almost caused him to run off the road. There was another animal in the road in front of him when "Mothman" swooped down in front of him. Now whether or not it was after the other animal or after his vehicle is unclear.

After leaving the restaurant, I stopped back in at the Mothman Museum and asked Jeremy if he had heard of the recent sightings, and sure enough he had as well.

I was not sure where Jim Hill Road was, but I did know where Sand Hill Road was, so I drove for miles out it but I never saw the first sign of anything.

But this is something to definitely keep an eye on in the near future. Why has it returned after all these years, if it in fact has?"

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Howie Noel is an extremely talented artist, and often makes appearances in the paranormal event circuits. His character "Tara" appears in a weekly web comic as a paranormal investigator. Howie is also well known for his incredible caricatures and his graphic novel "Mr. Scootles".

To learn more about H.C. Noel or to book him for an event, visit his website at: www.hcnoel.com

Sunday, July 12, 2009

I don't know what happened, but I've been sucking at posting blogs lately. I'm going to try to get back in the swing of things.

Anyway, Queen City Paranormal will be investigating the Wilton Town Hall Theatre in Wilton NH.

This building was originally the Wilton Town Hall and was built in 1886. The building had a playhouse where vaudeville and traveling shows were peformed until converting to silent films in 1912. Today, the building still hosts movies regularly.

There are two theaters, "The Big House" seats 250 people, while the "Screening Room" seats 63. The Screening room was converted from the changing rooms of the original vaudeville actors.

In doing some research on the place, I did find some interesting history. The information however, is coming from local ghost sites and paranormal groups, so I'm not 100% on the information. According to one site, before the town hall was built, there was a hotel that burnt down in the late 1800's. A small boy, named "Henry", died in the fire and is said to haunt one of the staircases.

On top of that, Wilton NH is known for having a substantial amount of paranormal activity throughout the town. This seems to be in correlation to the high amounts of granite and quartz found here. Another paranormal hot spot, Vale End Cemetery, is also found in Wilton (and is one of the creepiest places I have been to, when the air is just right). Unfortunately, Vale End has grown a little too popular over the past couple years and is now heavily patrolled. The cemetery is posted as "no trespassing after sunset" and the Wilton police take this very seriously. My group has tried bargaining with them to let us do some investigating on a planned night, but to no success.

Known activity for the Wilton Town Hall Theatre includes: the felt presence of a child entity, a woman in the mirror of the women's bathroom, and a skinny male entity walking down the hallways then disappearing.

From what I've heard and seen in pictures, the place seems really big. I'm really excited about doing this place. My only negative thoughts are that I wish we had our IR cameras for this one. If the case is promising, maybe we can schedule a second investigation when our equipment is in.

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Last weekend I was invited by the Maine Paranormal Society to help investigate the Poland Spring Resort in Poland Spring Maine. I brought Chris, an investigator from my group Queen City Paranormal, with me. It was about a two hour drive, a little north of Portland. The weather was kind of crappy and the further we drove, the foggier it got. I thought the beverage I chose for the ride up was pretty appropriate...

When we finally got there, we did a walk through of all of the buildings. Two members from NESPIME were also up there to help out. It was awesome to have three teams come together for one investigation. It's something that hasn't happened a lot in the past, but will definitely be happening more in the future. I love meeting new people in general, especially people who have the same interests as I do, and it was neat to be able to compare evidence that our teams had gotten in the past, and experience different techniques in investigating. I think more groups should give working together a try.

One of my favorites of the crew up there was Warren, he was a hoot. We shared the same love for jagermeister (not on the investigation), and having to pick everything up around us.

This picture looks pretty badass until you notice the bunny ears.

Our main meetup spot/base was in the Presidential Inn, which was HUGEFour floors of winding, neverending halls.

The resort is closed for the winter and was set to open up the following weekend, so no one was staying in any of the buildings, but they had been cleaned and were ready to go. When we got there, we had to play with the breakers to even get electricity in there. The first group to investigate this building went out to their cars for a minute and when they came back, there was a t.v. on in one of the rooms. At first we were thinking that maybe whoever last rented the room left the t.v. on and when they closed for the season, they may have just switched off the breaker. Then when we flipped the breaker on, the t.v. just came on with it. The only thing is, it didn't come on right when we flipped on the breaker. It was about an hour after we had turned the electricity on. Definitely something to think about.

This was the chapel.There's a lot of orby, dusty, crapola in this picture, but keep in mind- it was raining. It was actually pouring when this picture was taken. I don't really buy into the whole orb thing anyway, and don't really know anything about them, but if you're into it, this may or may not be a good picture? I dunno.

This is most of us. Chris and I are on the right, Mandy and Lou (in red) are from NESPIME and everyone to the left is MPS.

We had access to this building, but didn't even have enough time to go into it.

I think we had all pretty much had it with the group pictures at this point.

This is one of the four cottages that were there, and also where most of the activity ended up happening.

Each cottage was named after a member of the Ricker family (the family that started the resort back in the 1800s). This cottage was named after Hyram (who you will see in a minute). These cottages were also set to open for the season the following weekend, so we were very surprised that when we unlocked it to do the walk through, there were two rolls of toilet paper thrown into the hall on the floor. There were no open windows and nobody should've been in there besides someone working there to get it ready for the season. A lot of activity ended up happening in this cottage. Chris and I had this building first, along with Kelli from MPS and Tom, a keyholder for the resort and friend of the group. When we first got back to the cottage from the initial walk through, we noticed a glass vase type thing sitting in front of the door. This definitely was not there when we there a couple of hours ago and is still a mystery to us. Jim (the MPS founder) wanted the IR cameras set up in this building because it seemed to have the most activity. Footsteps, faces in the window, and even some full body apparitions. I won't go into too much detail on the events because it was more Kelli and Chris's experiences than mine. But there was definitely something happening in there. We sat in the downstairs living room and started an evp session. Right away we could hear shuffling around in other rooms and footsteps upstairs.

We asked for whatever was there to come into the room with us, and I can't even really explain it, but the room got thicker. The engery in there was so bizarre. We experienced the usual cold spots, goosebumps, and some leg tugging, but the feeling of the rooms is what weirded me out the most. It wasn't pitch black in there, but was pretty dark. I would say just enough light to see objects in the room and notice if there were any shadows (which there were plenty of), but at one point, the air became so thick, I couldn't even see my hand in front of my face. I literally just saw a thick mist right in front of me. Someone in the room was a sensitive and began picking up on some names and images. Later it was confirmed that all of the names they got were names of people buried in the family graveyard also on the resort.

There is a little misty orby something or other in this picture, and a little bit again in the next one. But I'm wondering if it was just caused by the flash of the camera. Because if you look at the second one, it looks like it may just be light reflecting off the base of the lamp onto the wall.

After our session in the cottage, all of us headed up to the Maine Inn to check out the library. Reports of activity there are books moving around, falling off shelves, and a full body apparition of the current owner's deceased husband. By this point, I was still a little numb from the activity in the cottage and needed a little refueling so Chris and I decided to go back to the Presidential building and get some food and explore in there a little.

We did hear a couple loud bangs and some footsteps, but we were pretty sure it was just noises coming from the pipes and heating vents. I'm not sure if anyone ended up having an experience in the library. I'm guessing they didn't because I'm sure we would've heard about it. People slowly trickled back into the Presidential Inn and we were all looking pretty tired. Chris and I decided to pack up and head home. I actually had to work that morning in Manchester.

On the way home, we put on our headphones and listened to the audio from the cabin. We did get a pretty clear evp of what sounds like someone saying "ELLIOT" (maybe the ghost of E.T. was there). I have no idea who Elliot could be, but I don't know what else it could be saying. The recorder I had left upstairs was pretty short, and I didn't get anything, but Chris said he got quite a few that I need to listen to. We're going to try to get them on the computer and I'll try to finagle a way to post them on here.

I'm also still waiting on pictures that MPS took. They took a lot of pictures of us throughout the night and I wanted to post them all at once, but I haven't seen anything up yet.

1) IR light, what it is and how to use it2) Video Noise vs. Mists3) Compression is your enemy4) Nightshot/Nightvision5) Equipment Demonstrationsand more...

Pareidolia

1) See the face in the picture?2) Did you hear that?and more...

The Investigation and Your client:

1) The do's and dont's during an investigation2) The interview process3) Qualifying the client and premises4) Finding clients and properties worth investigatingand more...5) Investigation Etiquette6) A proper reveal

Analyzing the Evidence

1) Software and Hardware Tools2) Proper analyzation techniques3) Tips and Tricks4) Things to look out for